Ten people each contribute $100 a month into a pool. They meet once a month and discuss possible projects to support. Each month, they give a grant of $1000 to a project that meets a simple criterion: it’s awesome.

This is a list of links to information resources related to sustainable agriculture, organic farming and gardening, and growing and buying good, safe food.

These resources are organized into the following general categories (though some are relevant to more than one category): Organizations, Educational Programs, Funding & Investing, Permaculture, Urban Farms, Agri-Tourism/Farm Tours, International/Non-U.S. Initiatives, Films and Books. This listing is not comprehensive. Please add a Comment to mention any other relevant resources that you would recommend.

Started by a group of organic farmers in New York's mid-Hudson Valley as a backlash against federal takeover of the organic program in 2002, Certified Naturally Grown has expanded over the past decade to include more than 700 farms in 47 states, executive director Alice Varon said.

"Certified Naturally Grown is tailored for direct-market farmers producing food without any synthetic chemicals specifically for their local communities," Varon said. "It's a particular niche of the agricultural world. It's not in direct competition with the national organic program."

Many small farmers previously certified organic by an independent organization have declined to participate in the federal program. They voice a variety of objections: extensive record-keeping requirements; fees that can amount to 6 percent of a small farm's gross sales; and philosophical objections to joining a monolithic government-run program that also certifies huge operations that ship produce across the country.

via AmpleHarvest.org﻿
Don’t have a garden but love the idea of AmpleHarvest.org? You can still help! Consider writing a Letter to the Editor - You can let gardeners and growers in your community know that they can help their neighbors in need by donating extra fruits and veggies to a local food pantry!
AmpleHarvest.org (not "Ample Harvest") actually connects grower who have harvested too much food with a nearby food pantry... not the end recipient themselves. This is critical for the legal protection of the donor. By giving food to a non-profit, the donor is legally protected by federal Good Samaritan laws (http://www.gbfb.org/_pdf/help/GoodSamaritanFoodDonationAct.pdf) something not available if you simply give the food to an individual.

just connected with www.linkedin.com/in/garyoppenheimer/how awesome is this!
Gary Oppenheimer is the founder and executive director of AmpleHarvest.org, Inc. – a nationwide non-profit that has created an entirely new supply side channel for America’s 33,500 food pantries by building a digital bridge between local gardeners who have grown too much food and a nearby food pantry desperate for the excess.

Given that America has 50 million food insecure people and 40 million home gardeners growing food, the impact of his work is that hunger, malnutrition and the waste stream are reduced, families get access to freshly harvested, locally grown food – vital towards reducing the epidemic of childhood obesity and Type II diabetes, and a sustainable, lifelong bridge is created between the grower and the food pantry.

By moving information instead of food, he is now enabling this locally grown produce to reach more than 6,000 food pantries (about 1 out of every 5 in America) where in the past, only processed food had been available. His core message is "No Food Left Behind" and his vision is an America where millions of gardeners eliminate malnutrition and hunger in their own community. He is a firm believer in the idea that to do the impossible, you must first believe it isn't.

He was named CNN Hero in 2010, Huff Post Game Changer 2011 and was a TEDx speaker in 2012.

Calling upon his past expertise as an entrepreneur, innovator, speaker, communications marketing/sales specialist and environmental advocate/lecturer, his work is now starting to be replicated with his assistance, in other countries.

AmpleHarvest.org has been highlighted on the White House web site, Michelle Obama has both written and spoken about it, it’s been endorsed by the National Council of Churches, the National Gardening Association, the USDA and many others.

Gary is also a long distance cyclist, hiker, farmer and keynote speaker.

Specialties:• Proficient at finding new solutions for old problems as well as finding old solutions for new problems.
• Embraced technology as an early adopter and therefore helped promote its use and spread.

How is the Brazilian Uprising Using Twitter? By Andrés Monroy-Hernández and Emma Spiro More than a million Brazilians have joined protests in over 100 cities throughout Brazil in the past few weeks....

"In order to better understand the development of the protests in social media, Twitter in particular, we collected the full set of 1,579,824 tweets posted between June 1st and June 22nd containing the following hashtags: #VemPraRua (Come to the streets), #MudaBrasil (Change Brazil), #ChangeBrazil, #ChangeBrasil, #passelivre (Free Pass), #protestosrj (Protests Rio de Janeiro), #ogiganteacordou (the giant awoke), #copapraquem (Cup for Whom), #PimientaVsVinagre (Pepper vs Vinager), #sp17j (Sao Paulo June 17), , #consolação, and #acordabrasil (Wake Up Brazil)".

The NSA revelations highlight the role sophisticated algorithms play in sifting through masses of data. But more surprising is their widespread use in our everyday lives. So should we be more wary of their power?

Via TEDTalks: “Architect Alastair Parvin presents a simple but provocative idea: what if, instead of architects creating buildings for those who can afford to commission them, regular citizens could design and build their own houses?

Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava URBZ/Urbanology, Mumbai Bhandup is a hill-side neighborhood. In the distance we can see the presence of high-rise buildings. Some of them are up-market others are cheaply built “slum rehabilitation schemes”.

Ron Finley—he of the “if you ain’t a gardener, you ain’t gangster” TED talk fame—planted just such a parkway garden in front of his house in South Central L.A. in 2010 and was duly fined by the city the following year. City Council member Herb Wesson, who represents the district where Finley lives, stood by the activist-gardener, vowing to change the restrictions. On Tuesday, two years later, now-City Council President Wesson brought up a measure that would temporarily suspend the parkway garden restrictions. It passed unanimously.

FarmedHere pioneered commercial vertical farming in Chicago. Our indoor aquaponic and aeroponic growing systems create local produce and local jobs in a sustainable farming environment. We reuse 97% of fresh water, we use no herbicides nor pesticides, we grow year round, and we do not have to deliver more than few miles: as local as one can get.

This is a list of links to information resources related to sustainable agriculture, organic farming and gardening, and growing and buying good, safe food.

These resources are organized into the following general categories (though some are relevant to more than one category): Organizations, Educational Programs, Funding & Investing, Permaculture, Urban Farms, Agri-Tourism/Farm Tours, International/Non-U.S. Initiatives, Films and Books. This listing is not comprehensive. Please add a Comment to mention any other relevant resources that you would recommend.

We're seeing protests everywhere. From Brazil to Turkey to Egypt. What's going on? Here's some thinking. Once ignited, open source protest is hard to stamp out. Open source protest is usually focused on a single overarching goal.

"It also make it nearly impossible for any single group or individual to sieze control of the protest and use it to advance their own agenda. In our post ideological world, agreement is difficult to come by (...) The final step is that people are starting to understand that open source networks that connect people horizontally are extremely powerful. We are learning an entirely new way of interacting. It will accelerate"

The description comes from an appeal for collaboration related to a Norwegian research project, and looks very promising: Terje Bongard: “Analyzing and testing a sustainable ingroup democracy, including the money value analysis, and how a change to...

Excerpted from the viewpoint of Ripplescam.org: “Hi there! I’ve being using Ripple since the closed beta, and I feel that the OpenCoin Inc (the for-profit company behind Ripple) scam and fraud attempt needs to be disclosed.

Mind mapping is a great way to brainstorm, make a plan, or turn ideas into the steps needed to make it real. Thankfully, there are great tools out there to help you build mind maps, organize them, and save them for later.

Photo: Sylvan Sunset | Scott Carpenter CC BY Every day new voices speak up against the toxicity of an economy based on credit-fueled growth depleting finite resources and destroying much of the social fabric in the process.

The UK’s data protection authority has ordered Google to change its privacy policy, while action is also being taken in Germany and Spain. The company faces an increasingly co-ordinated regulatory adversary.

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Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.